Triptych with the Adoration of Magi with Virgin and Donors

This little carved triptych appears to be of a type that was popular in the Netherlands in the first four decades of the 1500s and carved in the same workshops that were responsible for the far more numerous boxwood paternoster beads in the shape of prayer nuts such as Walters 61.132. The roundel at the bottom features the Sorrows of the Virgin, a particularly popular theme in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, the carving is quite stiff and the dark wood may not be boxwood (not tested). The triptych was in the Paris collection of Frederic Spitzer (1815-1890), who is well known to have both improved medieval and Renaissance objects in his collection and to have commissioned new ones. The piece (Spitzer 1893 sale, sculpture in wood, 2025) has not been adequately studied.

Provenance

Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object.

Frédéric Spitzer, Paris, by purchase; Sale, Paul Chevallier and Charles Mannheim, April 17, 1893; Caspar Bourgeois and Stephen Bourgeois, Cologne [date of acquisition unknown], by purchase; Sale, Cologne, October 19, 1904, no. 1101; Jacques Seligmann, Paris [date of acquisition unknown], by purchase; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1910, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.